Religious Multiculturalism in Apollonius' Argonautica

In this dissertation, I focus on religious multiculturalism in Apollonius’ Argonautica by highlighting the interconnections between different cultures and approaches to ritual in relation to space, place, and narrative structure. I demonstrate the existence of two religious spheres in the Argonautic world: a Greek sphere centering on Greece and the Aegean Sea and an Egyptian sphere stretching from Colchis to Libya. I show how, in Apollonius, each cultural domain functions as a microcosm of religious activities with which Greek and non-Greek characters engage according to Greek or non-Greek and local religious norms. Moreover, I demonstrate that, in Apollonius’ multicultural world, the gods typically mediate between the Greek heroes and non-Greek characters by bridging their cultural and religious differences. Local divinities are particularly active as intermediaries in Books 3 and 4. We see a similar principle of divine mediation in the narrator’s relationship with the Muses, who become his “interpreters” of Greek, non-Greek, and local knowledge. The importance of mediating between the human and divine realms, as well as between different languages and cultures, emphasized in the Argonautica reflects similar concerns in Apollonius’ real context, where the role of Egyptian priests, who are bilingual in Greek and Egyptian, is representative of their prominence as mediators and transmitters of Egyptian knowledge on behalf of the Ptolemaic rulers.